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KNOW THYSELF

Our home is a wreck. From top to bottom. It looks like something straight out of hoarders. The rooms have been emptied into other rooms on top of the stuff already in the room. It is true insanity. Remodeling is an adventure that you have no control over. You are at the mercy of people you don’t know and you find your life reduced to rooms of piles and material things and oh yes…don’t forget the color swatches. It is nuts. Put it this way, I have a queen size mattress in one of my bathrooms. I have to remind myself, that at the end of this project I will have something so much better than what is there, but getting there is going to be a REALLLLLLLLLLLL Challenge. We have knocked out walls, ripped out cabinets, ripped out base boards, and thrown out the old carpet.

As the old stuff is getting ripped out I cannot tell you the anxiety I have. Perhaps it’s the hammer, pounding away at the existing structure or the pop of the boards giving way to something new. Whatever it is I have to close my eyes, plug my ears and look away. I think my anxiety is from the unknown, how is going to be put back together, what if the new idea turns out worse than the old existing structure. What if I am wrong and I should have left it?

And then it comes to me. It doesn’t matter. The old stuff wasn’t working for me and it was making me miserable. The same old, same old, the same complaining about not enough space, old scratched up baseboards, dark colors and drab depressing woodwork was not working anymore. I was complaining and not doing anything about it. Time to reassess and take stock of the stuff I wanted to keep and the stuff I wanted to trash. I was complaining about being tired of complaining. Isn’t that nuts?

Our lives are much the same way. As I looked around my bedroom tonight I thought to myself…you know at one point in my life, I think I looked this way. I think to be the best people we can be, we have to constantly assess which wall to knock down in our lives, which ones to build and how much trash to take out. I am sure that my parents at certain points during my life had to look away, as life hammered at my existing structure to break me into submission. I have had to look away myself when people I love have gone through the same process. It isn’t pretty. In fact, when we go through these periods of personal growth it is usually ugly and if the lessons aren’t learned, they can drag on for months and sometimes years. If we don’t go through this process, I think we end up as debilitated specimens of what could have been. And honestly, sometimes, we have to take ourselves down to our foundation and get real with who we are.

Who we are means going down deep, without the distractions of others to define who we are. We gotta know at least from a minimalist perspective of what we believe and the truth of the things we know. What may be true to me may not be true to you. But that is ok. I can love you, you can love me and we rest in the peace of knowing God made us each different and placed a part of him in each of us to recognize truth. The danger is losing sight of this. Floating along in a sea of disparity for long points in time and not recognizing a higher calling. We all have a higher calling. We were all made for greatness. Each and every one of us has greatness within us and can achieve whatever it is we are called to do. The real question is are we willing to accept the mission?

We can all get lost. And we can all be found. Even if it means ripping out the walls, repainting or knocking ourselves down and starting over. No matter where you are in this journey, just remember one of the most important lessons, which is to Know Thyself.